How to render plain HTML links in Asp.Net MVC loop?

Question

I would like to render a list of HTML links in ASP.NET MVC. Note that the links are absolute and external to the website being designed. The following code

Answer 1

You are not missing anything but good approach is to create extender method on HtmlHelper:

public static class HtmlHelpers
    {

        public static string SimpleLink(this HtmlHelper html, string url, string text)
        {
            return String.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>", url, text);
        }

    }

then you can use it like this:

<tr>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(item.Id) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.SimpleLink(item.Url,item.Text) %>
        </td>
    </tr>

[edit] I forgot to add. In order to use this HtmlHelper extender throughout application you need to add the following in the web config file:

<system.web>
      <pages>
         <namespaces>
            <!-- leave rest as-is -->
            <add namespace="theNamespaceWhereHtmlHelpersClassIs"/>
        </namespaces>
      </pages>
    </system.web>

Answer 2

Orchard project has an HtmlHelper extensions class which has a link builder method.

See: HtmlHelperExtensions.Link()

http://orchard.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/dbec3d05e6d1#src%2fOrchard%2fMvc%2fHtml%2fHtmlHelperExtensions.cs

Allows the following usage:

<li>@Html.Link(Model.Path, Model.Title)</li> 

Update The above link is no longer valid, but if you download the source, you will find HtmlHelperExtensions which has 5 overloads for Links, one of which looks like this:

public static IHtmlString Link(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string linkContents, string href, IDictionary<string, object> htmlAttributes) {
        var tagBuilder = new TagBuilder("a") { InnerHtml = htmlHelper.Encode(linkContents) };
        tagBuilder.MergeAttributes(htmlAttributes);
        tagBuilder.MergeAttribute("href", href);
        return new HtmlString(tagBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
    } 

Answer 3

I like to implement it the way the MVC framework does it, using the tag builder class. This way I can pass through the htmlAttributes parameter to add things like class or other attributes:

public static MvcHtmlString HtmlLink(this HtmlHelper html, string url, string text, object htmlAttributes)
{
 TagBuilder tb = new TagBuilder("a");
 tb.InnerHtml = text;
 tb.MergeAttributes(new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes));
 tb.MergeAttribute("href", url);
 return MvcHtmlString.Create(tb.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
}

May seem like overkill just to generate a link, but it means you don't have to muck about with string format patterns to insert additional HTML attributes on the link

Answer 4

I think it's good. A simple foreach does the repeater role in MVC.

Answer 5

I would rather use

<td><a href="<%= item.Url %>">link</a></td>

seems somewhat "cleaner" to me, but I think your approach just as good.

Answer 6

To avoid Html encoding use @Html.Raw(url).